Months seem to fly by these days – we’re already into February! And with a new month comes a new blog earnings report. In my previous report from last month, I announced how December made a new record, having brought in over $1,100.

With several new blog income records in a row, my goal for January was to break $1,300. Unfortunately, January did not break a new record, and was somewhat disappointing. This was due to several factors:

First, PR0. Having recently been slapped with a PageRank of 0, I removed Text-Link-Ads from my blog since they were utterly useless (who wants to purchase text links on a PR0 site?). Granted, I was only making around $40 a month from them, but as you’ll see, this adds up quickly.

Two advertisers did not renew their 125×125 banners. I have an inventory of eight 125×125 slots, and 2 advertisers did not renew their banners. That is another $80.

Somebody actually purchased a paid review from me, but because of the above 125×125 reason (as well as time issues), I decided to review it in February instead. If I had that $80 from the two missing banners, I’d have done the review to set a new record.

So, if I had found two advertisers to grab the two missing 125×125 slots in time, I’d actually have set a new record.

Anyhow, without further adieu, here are January 2008’s earnings: $955

Yes, it is a bit disappointing not being able to announce a new record, but I can’t expect to set new records every month. It’s part of the ebb and flow of business to see some fluctuations in earnings, and really, $955 is only 14% less from my best month. And compared to exactly one year ago, in January of 2007, it is much larger than the $102.08 I made then.

So really, I’m quite satisfied with starting 2008 at nearly $1,000. If I don’t increase my earnings at all, that’s still $12,000 a year from a blog. A blog. I certainly can’t complain about that.

I should also mention that I received 12,000 Entrecard credits from an advertiser to put up a 125×125 banner for a month. That would literally take me 4 months to make from Entrecard myself, so I was quite content with that.

The Numbers

Since we’re now a month into 2008, my charts and graphs are pretty unexciting (yes, that’s a word) since there are no past months to compare them to. In addition, I’ve removed the Text Link Ads, PayPerPost, and ReviewMe columns since I don’t use them anymore, nor make anything from them.

I am interested in seeing how the relationship between my private ads and affiliate numbers will compare throughout the year.

Currently, affiliates make up 11% of my income compared to private ads, but I’d like to see that increase a bit. I’m not sure what a healthy number would be, but I’m thinking that about 20-25% would be going in the right track.

WordZe has continued to bring in good residual revenue, having brought in over $100 last month. They key word here is “residual”; I receive 30% commission for the the life of my referrals. As long as they keep subscribing to WordZe, I keep making money. I highly recommend their very lucrative affiliate program which pays 30% for life and 5% for 2nd tier.

Sidewide 125×125 Banner Slots Available

I currently have two slotsone slotno more slots available for the Sitewide 125×125 Banner campaign. They cost $40 a month and can be purchased on my advertising page. If they’re good enough for John Chow to purchase to advertise TTZMedia, they’re good enough for you!

Sponsor Shoutouts

I’d like to give some quick shoutouts to my repeat sponsors and advertisers:

InstantCoding – You must know these guys by now, as they have the most prominent ad on my blog. Check out my review of them.

pepperjamNETWORK – While this 728×90 banner is new, the slot has been renewed by my loyal advertiser Lee Bandoni since September 2007.

TTZMedia – John Chow has continued to renew his ad for his TheTechZone affiliate program for the third time. Check out TTZMedia.com and try John Chow’s very own affiliate program.

WordZe – I’m making continual residual income from them each month. Their referral program is really lucrative, check it out if you have the chance, or read my extensive review of them.

LearnHow2Earn.com – Apart from being a popular guest poster on my blog, Nick has been a recent but recurring 125×125 advertiser. Be sure to check out his blog, as he has some good posts.

February Goals and Predictions

I’m going to carry over my goal that I didn’t meet for January over to February, and aim to make $1,300. I am very confident that I will make it this time as I raised my 728×90 and 250×250 prices which will bring in an extra $100. In addition, a deal I’ve been working on for many weeks should finally go live within a week.

Shit I could live off $1000 a month right now. Good stuff. I don’t know if you posted about forums in the past, but i see you own quite a few. I’m going to be releasing a forum to compliment my Guitar Hero site in the coming weeks. I’d love to hear any tips you have for setting up a successful forum.

Well, I might suggest you to request Google for reconsideration. After removing TLAs, I did exactly the same thing and I received PR3 for my blog though not the original PR4.

Secondly, you only do direct reviews, but how about trying something like SponsoredReviews that can get you reviews worth $100 to $500 without considering the Google PR. Your technorati is good, Alexa is good and Link Pop must be good then you would rank higher in their list.

Don’t forget to mention it to me by some way, if you try out SP and like it.

Not with LIC alone, but with little bunch of my other blogs, I could make $1407 last month and that was also one of my lows – but that’s fine, I would take this graph inclining over this year.

My blog was reduced to zero quite some time ago, but I’ve had the TLA ads sold out almost ever since… and by my recall your Alexa ranking is much better than mine… so I can’t see why it would be a problem: I’ve kept mine and advertisers are still interested.

the thing I like best about your blog income is that the majority of it comes from private ad sales. I like that you give quality information from your blog and dont seem to focus on affiliate sales like some of the other big bloggers.

Tyler, as I’ve stated on another occasion, your current income level is far from the true potential of the blog. Let’s face it, $955 is nothing compared to how much this blog could generate and it’s just a shame because this is indeed a resource worth following and earnings should do a better job of reflecting that aspect. I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out for you and I’m sure that the future will bring some excellent improvements.

12g’s? Hope ya got a day job too!!! You do seem to be an up and coming blog (whatever that means) so I suspect you will marginally always increase your dinero as you go. Hopefully it or something else pays the bills for ya. Good Luck!!

This blog isn’t his main revenue site so that is basically “extra” cash for doing post he would have probably been doing anyway.

Tyler, I agree with Alan, I don’t see any reason why you can’t double or triple the revenue without too much more effort.

Maybe add a couple/few more honest and thoughtful review of affiliate products? Even just finding a few extra a month and doing a good review on them would help. But you have enough pull you could probably get free demo versions from a lot of the products directly from the owners to review as well which could also open up more relationships or could turn into advertisers. Rather than charging to do the review do the review but have your affiliate link. Of course that would work better for products you think you would actually like as positive review would probably get more people interested lol. But just do a few extra product/service review like you do for wordze.

Also, to help build the traffic even faster, how about doing some guest reviews on a few of the other blogs out there? We already know you always write quality post so maybe get in contact with Chow and shoemoney to get a couple guest post a month maybe. Heck, even Cow is running off guest post right now so it would be easy to get one on there.

I still think you should start up poker blog too. Could focus on tips and strats or maybe more pro level. Of course that wouldn’t raise the revenue on this blog but you have the skills and passion and you already know how profitable poker traffic is so might as well make something off it with a couple post a week ;). Or I could just start a poke blog and have you guest post lol.

Go back to the drawing board – Myself and a friend were chatting about your blog last week and we both said that the quality of your posts have done down hill over the last few months… Don’t take that personally – I’m sure you know the true value of honest feedback

I certainly disagree with lots of people here. This blog has space to grow up a lot, and besides, it is always a passive income. $12K a year may not be that much, but it’s definitely a nice bonus when you think about it, I mean, do you NOT want $1K extra a month?

Also, your blog looks great and posts are still of good quality. Keep up the good work and let us know how your earnings do, you’ll be retiring soon from your dayjob, trust me

Yo Curly! Absolutely a good side gig! !2 G’s on the side is very nice. My whole point was just that…hopefully it’s on the side….Otherwise it’s pathetic. Anything on the side I think is gravy…but so many net types aren’t terribly truthful about such things….It goes with the territory I suppose!

@Tommy: Yeah, but that’s not Tyler’s only source of income (check the about page). Besides it has had a steady growth for all the last year if you check his last year’s stats, so it will probably keep going up

Yep I see that, which makes the accomplishment much more valuable I think. Anytime one can do something here like Tyler has while maintaining a real job or two makes this a much bigger deal as I had hoped was the case when I first posted. Peace……T

best of luck for the $1300 .. I stumbled onto you blog from Court’s blog and I really feel that people like you court,Vic and Grizz should make a lot more for all you are doing in terms of telling the truth about blogging and creating niche websites.

best of luck for your goal but I have a suggestion,you should try project payday as an affiliate as most people coming onto your blog would like that extra income I am sure that as an affiliate will increase your income.